BIA Releases Strategic Economic Plan For N.H.

The plan includes more than 100 policy recommendations covering nine areas believed to be essential to the state’s economy. The recommendations include some classic BIA issues, like streamlining access to the Research and Development tax credit and increasing STEM education. But there’s also a recommendation to emphasize arts, culture and history in schools.

Association President Jim Roche says that’s because they spent months meeting with stakeholders both in and out of the BIA. He says the big takeaway is that New Hampshire is at a crossroads.

“One road leads us toward becoming just another expensive--some would say anti-business—state in the Northeast," he says. "The other road leads us to standing out as the most business-friendly in the Northeast. If we can make incremental progress in these nine different areas.”

Roche says the list of recommendations is too large for the BIA to take on everything, and that it wasn’t intended as a “to-do list” for the group. But he says the findings on health care did convince the association to support expanding Medicaid.